The present disclosure relates generally to medical devices, and more particularly, to devices for monitoring blood pressure of a patient.
This section is intended to introduce the reader to various aspects of art that may be related to various aspects of the present disclosure, which are described and/or claimed below. This discussion is believed to be helpful in providing the reader with background information to facilitate a better understanding of the various aspects of the present disclosure. Accordingly, it should be understood that these statements are to be read in this light, and not as admissions of prior art.
In the field of medicine, doctors often desire to monitor certain physiological characteristics of their patients. Accordingly, a wide variety of devices have been developed for monitoring many such physiological characteristics. Such devices provide doctors and other healthcare personnel with the information they need to provide the best possible healthcare for their patients. As a result, such monitoring devices have become an indispensable part of modern medicine.
For example, clinicians may wish to monitor various physiological parameters of a patient, such as blood pressure. Blood pressure may be non-invasively assessed using a sphygmomanometer, which is used in conjunction with an acoustic device, e.g., a stethoscope, to measure a patient's blood pressure. During a measurement, a medical professional typically places a cuff around the patient's arm and inflates it to a pressure that exceeds the systolic blood pressure. The medical professional then incrementally reduces pressure in the cuff while listening for flowing blood with the stethoscope. The pressure value at which blood first begins to flow past the deflating cuff, indicated by a Korotkoff sound, is the systolic pressure. The minimum pressure in the cuff that restricts blood flow, as detected by the stethoscope, is the diastolic pressure. The stethoscope monitors this pressure by detecting another Korotkoff sound that reflects a disappearance in the acoustic magnitude of the periodic beats, indicating that the cuff no longer restricts blood flow (i.e., the diastolic pressure barely exceeds the cuff pressure). Blood pressure measurements taken with a sphygmomanometer may be subject to the skill of the caregiver in detecting sounds associated with peak diastolic pressure.